


Fledge

by pympocket (Thurisaz)



Category: Avengers: Endgame (2019), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame spoilers, Bipolar Disorder, M/M, Mental Illness, No Character Death, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Spoilers, Thor study, bipolar depression, endgame spoilers, manic depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-07 05:41:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18614281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thurisaz/pseuds/pympocket
Summary: Thor grasped Loki’s hand in his own scarred one. Though his memory was like sweat upon his skin he saw in his mind every day Loki had thrown a vase, conjured a snake, stabbed him, forged a face onto himself—the time when he was mad for the Mad Titan, and his illness then. Much had changed in these five years of loneliness, not only for Thor but for Loki perhaps as well. His story sat wrapped within him, a dormant serpent, not ready to free unto the world.





	Fledge

**Author's Note:**

> CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR AVENGERS: ENDGAME 
> 
> This is tagged Loki/Thor but it’s very gen and soft. Entirely written as my way of processing how I saw Thor deal with manic depression and trauma, both things that I have. Very self-indulgent. Comments and critique welcomed.

Thor thought that after their snap to kill Thanos and dissolve his armies that the realms would tilt back into balance. That his people would be back, that his brother would be whole, that maybe by a witch’s wish his mother would give him some omen in the form of a bird or serpent. And yet the only balance he found was a house on a gravely hill in a watery town, and that he was still out of beer and mead and the cable still wasn’t fixed. Humanly poverty. His armor was still dusty and bloodied, his hammer gone to other worthy hands. Everything was miserable yet.

The day was touching evening when Thor stumbled out of his small fishing house to gather new beer for his nightly drinking. He shivered against the wind spitting from the darkening sea. Earth, while not new, was unfamiliar and cold. This sea settlement allotted by the Norwegian government was a faint tracing of the port towns from home, where even the sea water had been slightly sweet. Asgard had been an eternal spring and summer, where the breezes off the water were simply cool and the starlight simply warm, and delicate grasses could grow as viciously as weeds. 

Thor was not ungrateful, but he did feel some resentment. Here the fishes were different, not as bright or colorful, and the sky in autumn was craggy blue. Here by the sea the weather never truly warmed; The wind was balmy and sea-sour, the rocks salty and sharp with tide pools.

His people kept the beer kegs down in these pools to keep them naturally cold, and just far enough out of convenient reach. The Valkyrie found him here as he trundled down the soggy dock to the clutch of kegs.

“You don’t have to go back to the drinking, you know. I’ve been around that corner, on Sakaar,” she said. She took a loud breath. “You look like shit, your majesty.” 

The Valkyrie’s hair was undone from its braided knot and blew around her face like black spider silk. Her hood was tucked away against her chin like a scarf. “And I say that with all kindness, of course.”

Thor looked out to the sea and nodded. “Nothing new I suppose,” he said. “Your majesty.” He reached for the driest keg and hauled it upon his shoulder.

“It reminds me of the soldiers back from old campaigns,” she said. “Soldiers who still live the fights in their minds when their heads are safe on their down pillows. Frankly, it’s unbecoming. At least comb your beard out. Not a good look for you.” She didn’t smile.

Thor ran his hand over his beard. His fingers were going numb from the wind, and the bristles of his beard added to the painful tingle. His hair, longer and more wild than it had been when he was a child, cut into his eyes and about his neck.

“Thank you for your confidence, then. Your majesty.”

The Valkyrie sighed: “You know what I’m saying.”

“I don’t, nothing’s wrong.”

“People are worried. Your people. I may be a leader but you’re still a hero. A god. They’ve seen you grow up and they know what happened—we all do. And now they know to watch your door in the evenings, because otherwise their hero Thor is nothing more than a bloody drunk.”

“They may watch all they like,” he sniffed. “Knock even if they wish. I’m sure if I’m not available Korg would be happy to help with whatever the issue is.” He turned slowly, careful not to slip on the old wood and slick stones.

The Valkyrie followed him, the toes of her boots barely scraping the heels of Thor’s own.

“How did your mother, the Queen, ever learn to deal with such a stubborn man?” She did not shout, but her words were loud against the slush of the tide. 

“She always said she was raised by witches and that she had a knack for difficult men.” He laughed. “You knew Odin, after all. She had practice before I came along. Before Loki—before he came along, too.” 

The steps to his house drew up and Thor shifted the keg onto the modest and leaning porch.

“Could you get someone to come and fix the cable, next time you’re out of town?”

The Valkyrie huffed, crossed her arms, and looked off to the hills where her pegasus-mount and foals were tucking in to their turf barn for the night. “Fine,” she said. “Sure, fine. I’ll go first thing in the morning.”

She left and Thor went into his house.

Evenings passed, and every night the people of New Asgard knew to watch the narrow stoop of Thor’s door. He could feel their stares like a blood clot in his throat. 

Everything felt hot from inactivity. The strings of his leg muscles flexed and contracted like snakes in a writhing ball—the feel of his hair was excruciating, but he dare not cut it again. Instead he pulled on a fistful at the nape of his neck until his palms where cut from his fingernails. He kept chips of ice or old pencils between his teeth for he clenched them so hard he could feel a groan in the bone of his jaw. 

Over and over he heard motion outside and down the hill but he couldn’t remember what the Valkyrie said; if he had asked her to fix the cable or to fetch an errand or to beat him bloody. His past—present future? Time was in all directions now in all paths, each one like a color of the Bifrost and just as volatile. One wrong step and he would be flung away and across the abyss. He found Lokis in the past Asgards but were they his Loki? If each past was a new future and a new string of time for a new string of a possible reality then was there a future where he had saved them all? How now were his family, dead and dust beyond every curve of the universe. The amber ashes of his mother’s funeral boat had gone towards their sun in an unerring line; his father not far from the very cliff where Thor’s house stood crooked; Loki was among debris to be scavenged, much like he himself had been by the Guardians.

His doldrum consumed him like the rush of a tide. He slept and slept and got up to piss. Every organ in his body felt closed off, his throat zipped shut and his stomach a dry pouch. He cracked his knuckles against his chest, and the sound was a small relief. His skin was too tight, be it from his stomach or from his soul trying to escape. All over Thor felt the thousand tiny hands of doubt squeeze each one of his pores, and they held on until he could bear it no more and he scrubbed himself raw in his small human-sized shower. He got a drink, drank it, got another, smashed the bottle against the ground, then fetched a glass of mead.

Days later he awoke in a silence. The television was off, as was the console. Korg was gone off somewhere, and so the house creaked much less than normal. Thor could hear the sea whistle through gaps between the windows and the caulking; it was an old house, one that a fisherman had sold off to the settlement with little hesitation, to the best of Thor’s knowledge. He hadn’t been there for the transaction, only moved into the place at the prodding of the Valkyrie and other elder members of the remaining Asgardians. He didn’t remember it.

Different bottles of local beers were cluttered on the floor, and he nearly tripped. He picked glass out of his sole and clenched a sock about his foot to stop the meagre bleeding. He grabbed a bottle up off the floor as he shrugged off his coat, and quickly drank the dredges. He pulled a zippered sweater from the coatrack and nearly slapped himself as he put it on, leaning against the wall. Next to the coatrack was an old pentagonal fishbowl full of bottle caps. From a distance they looked like candies. The fishbowl sat on top of his old travel leathers. Thor grabbed another bottle, cracked the cap, and downed it in a scant few gulps. 

He didn’t get drunk. He already was, and didn’t suppose he could get any further along. He had never blacked out, not for a few decades at least. His hand flexed around the bottle, and in the far corner Stormbreaker hopped against the wall hangings. 

He wandered through the living room to put the keg next to his usual chair. The room smelled different, as if it had been quickly cleaned. The scent of mineral oil was gone from the place, as well as the coppery tang of Miek’s mucus membranes. Instead there was a faint sigh of clove candles and almond soap. Thor breathed in, held his breath, then sat down on his sagging couch. A stash of unopened bottles clamored beside the cushions.

His window darkened. Thor glanced up, bottle near his lips. There was a figure walking in the distance, then as he blinked they were closer, too close too quickly to have simply walked, and as he blinked again he felt a blush of warmth enter the house, and the scents of clove and almonds thickened, and he blinked again and Loki sat before him on the chair next to the clouded window.

Neither of them spoke for a long moment.

Loki’s hair was disheveled, though smoothed down in a haphazard manner, like a tangle of mistletoe. His entire body was wrapped in dark coats and scarves, even thick gloves over his hands that rested upon the arms of Thor’s chair. Thor could not see his eyes well, for his own eyes were watery and closing, his head bending down as if one hundred hammers were sinking into his back.

“I expected at least a little fanfare,” Loki said. “Instead I get this sorry sight. And after so long.”

Every breath bellowed in his ears and chest like the stride of a war horse. The tightness in his body returned and he felt like he may lose his bowel. Thor shuffled and burped, pushing his face into a flat cushion. His beard caught in the sparse threads. “I apologize for the inconvenience,” he stuttered. “I’m afraid I’ve run this circuit too many times already. Give me your nightmares and leave.”

“I’m not a dream,” Loki said. 

“A hallucination—I see no difference.”

“Neither am I that. Get your face out of that cushion.”

Thor rolled his head about and stared with gummy pink eyes at Loki, who still sat upon his window chair in his gloves and coat and scarf. He had no shoes, and his curled toes stuck out beneath the blanket he draped upon himself.

“I see you don’t believe me,” Loki said.

“How could I!” Thor wiped his running nose and eyes on the worn sleeve of his long sweater. “What is it you always say, ‘How many times are you going to fall for that?’”

“Most people, including myself at times, think you foolish and stubborn, not stupid.”

“Is it stupid to know a dream when it comes and to not let it stay?”

Slowly, Loki stood up. He folded the blanket and placed it on the back of the window chair. Suddenly the darkness about him grew and warmed, and he walked over to Thor’s couch, pushing bottles out of the way. Without hesitation but with great gentleness he tugged off his gloves and pushed his cool hands under Thor’s sweater, onto Thor’s stomach.

“Is that enough for you?”

Thor cursed and shuffled away, spilling his beer upon his chest and stomach where Loki’s hands still pressed. He felt Loki conjure ice beneath his fingernails and scratch them against his belly. It was soothingly familiar, but a sudden change in what he assumed had been a sketch from his sickly brain. 

“You’ve really let yourself go. Miss me that much, hm?” Loki was smirking in what Thor knew was his gentlest way possible, the smile he used when he wanted to be right and had convinced himself he was.

“Yes,” Thor said. “Of course I do. Every day, every moment.” His mouth struggled around the words, not slurring but stuttering them out as if they had no desire to leave his core. But as always Loki drew them out like poison from a vein.

Loki’s hands warmed and the ice under his fingernails began to melt. He pulled back and pushed away Thor’s sweater. The smirk on his face crossed over with mild disgust or disdain—Thor couldn’t tell. Loki looked down upon Thor and shuffled up onto his knees on the further-sagging couch. 

Thor’s body ached and he was thirsty. Deep wine-purple bruises covered most of his shoulders and stomach, and a clotted black slash stained his chest from where Thanos had tried to cut into his heart with Stormbreaker. Long wicking burns crossed his arms and clavicle, a residue of Thor’s own lightning striking him in the throb of battle. His hair was more of a rat’s nest, his beard flattened on one side and crumby. His skin was hot and raw all over, and now he had eight watery imprints where Loki had scratched him. No memory or dream had haunted him so physically before, no fugue of drink nor black stretch of misery.

He realized then that Loki was there with his hands upon his scars. Loki, perhaps not alive, but aware and embodied.

“I know.” Thor said. “I look a disgrace now. What would mother think? An utter failure she’s raised.” Thor laughed, then choked on his spittle and coughed into his shoulder.

He had tried to save her, but she wouldn’t let him. Thor wished he had that kind of serene confidence, that kind of love towards one’s own fate. But already that memory of meeting her back in old Asgard was starting to tarnish and chip away. Already he forgot the feel of her hair and the sound of her dress.

He figured now his mother would hate him, at least somewhat. His apathy and beer had made him gain weight, his beard was long and unbraided, and his hair was in oily locks that spat against his lips when he walked the pier. He had restored the universe, but had failed double-fold the people he loved. Thor hated himself, of course. 

“Where are Korg and Miek, then? If you aren’t a specter of my own device.”

“With the Valkyrie,” Loki said. He shrugged. “They didn’t seem to mind when I asked them for a moment.” He loosed the scarf and coat about him.

“You are dead, Loki. This is just another dream, another vision I’ve had.”

“Have you not found the stones then, to undo all this?” 

“No,” Thor said. “Not our stones. Thanos destroyed them, and then I killed him. I’ve ruined my only good future.” He looked at Loki and blinked slowly. He cleared his throat. “We borrowed them from else-when. I saw mother, and you, but I had to leave.

“Stark managed—Stark snapped everything back, everything that had been dusted away, but nothing else. No one slaughtered came back. No one from our ship, not even you.”

“You think me not very clever, Thor,” Loki said quietly. “For I was snapped too, although it was my neck and not by two fingers.”

Loki pulled the scarves away from himself and threw them to the ground. Around his neck was a wrung burn that encircled the circumference twice. They were a peachy violet, and swollen greatly. Then his skin flashed blue, his eyes ruddy red, and his appearance calmed again. 

“When I awoke I was in space, floating among debris. I found that in my giant’s skin I could survive the cold at least a little while. Even if it was a hateful thing to wear.” He brushed his hands down Thor’s arms along the lightning scars, soothing the furrowed skin. “Scavengers found me, and I eventually made it back to Earth. It took years, I suppose. But where else was I to go?”

“Loki—”

“I know,” he said. “I know it. I’ve done my crimes.” He took his jacket off.

Thor sat up and cleared the floor around the couch. He pulled his sweater and socks off, and sat hunched over his belly, hands on his knees. “Another thing I’ve done to you.”

They sat in silence for two hours. Thor’s body flushed red from the chill and from his brother’s nearness, all the hairs along his arms standing up like soldiers. Most of the scars over his lightning burns flaked terribly, some bleeding lightly and others puckered like fists. 

Loki crawled onto his knees next to him, clad in only his trousers and undershirt. His own skin was yellow like mares’ milk, and seemed green in places where it was thin and the blue arteries and veins of his heritage beat loudly. Together he seemed not to glow a faint sickly green, but gave a look of crabgrass or early cabbage around his joints and mouth. His eyes were blue and endless still but worn like river stones.

“Quite a pair we make,” Thor said. His voice was soft like chaff.

“Well,” Loki said, “I’d rather be a pair than otherwise. I was in prison, remember? When I killed our mother. Alone there.”

“I remember.”

“A loneliness like that I would wish on no one, not even you.”

“Do you forgive me for that day?”

“No,” Loki said, “but I’ve moved on. Bitterness only swallows more and more. My heart can’t take it. I’m afraid now I’m all thorns.”

Thor grasped Loki’s hand in his own scarred one. Though his memory was like sweat upon his skin he saw in his mind every day Loki had thrown a vase, conjured a snake, stabbed him, forged a face onto himself—the time when he was mad for the Mad Titan, and his illness then. Much had changed in these five years of loneliness, not only for Thor but for Loki perhaps as well. His story sat wrapped within him, a dormant serpent, not ready to free unto the world.

But like on Sakaar the agony of betrayal was no longer on Loki’s face. He looked sickly but not sick. He had survived much while on his own getting back to Earth, while Thor had sequestered himself to a beer bottle and mead cup. Perhaps there was bravery left in him.

Loki grasped his hand back and sat up. “I’m getting better, you know.”


End file.
